Weighing the pluses and minuses of the McCain/Palin ticket, Rod offered a number of reasons why he thinks supporting the ticket helps move toward some important goals.  One reason he gave was this:

A real Sam’s Club Republican — a dynamic and articulate young woman — is in position to take over the GOP when McCain passes from the scene. 

This came back to me when reading a later post, in which Rod was citing Prof. Deneen’s concerns about Palin:

Personal example is a good thing, but societal structure shapes us. Show me the money – and that it’s not all going to go the oil companies, the “developers,” the big box stores, and the SUV manufacturers.

The remark about box stores stood out for me, because I had just read this account from a Wasilla resident that a commenter had pointed out to me, in which the Wasilla woman said that in her time as mayor Palin had “[t]urned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.”  Other unflattering revelations abound in the account.  In this sense, she may very well be a “Sam’s Club Republican” in the narrowest sense of promoting the rise of box stores, but this is the same kind of “growth” agenda that the GOP has advanced for years and reflects the mentality of consumption and acquisition that Rod and Prof. Deneen have criticized so vocally.  It may be that Palin will be in a leading position in the GOP after a McCain administration (although I doubt it), but it seems very likely that the things that Rod and Prof. Deneen are hoping to find in her are not there.

I have noticed a recurring pattern in reactions to the selection of Sarah Palin, both anecdotally and in polling: men have tended to be unusually enthusiastic about her, while women have tended to be more cautious and critical in their responses.  This is not an absolute rule, since there have certainly been skeptical and critical responses from men as well, but it has been the case that women I have spoken to in the last few days, regardless of their own political leanings, have been much more likely to question the choice and Palin’s acceptance of the VP slot on the grounds that she is a mother of several young children.  The objections were often expressed in practical terms (“how is she going to take care of her children and do this job?”), but the concern was fundamentally moral.  It was the answer to the practical question, which they already knew (“she isn’t, someone else is”), that prompted this concern. 

For decades, perhaps long after most of them stopped believing it, most conservatives have objected to the distortions of the sexual revolution and the pretense that there were no meaningful differences between the sexes.  Stressing the distinctive and complementary roles of men and women, bristling at the suggestion of an identical equality of the sexes and railing against the idea that men and women are simply interchangeable in their roles, conservatives have pushed back, at least rhetorically, against the destructive and perverse notion that men and women are in all important respects the same.  Perhaps it has been the last seven years of embracing the anti-jihadist propaganda praising secular modernity and women’s emancipation that has helped to erase these ideas from the minds of most conservatives, or perhaps it was the quintessential modern conservative delusion that we can “have it all”–complete with political Amazons leading the charge for traditional culture–that has blinded everyone to what is being compromised here.  You could hardly ask for a better representation of the spiritual illness afflicting American conservatives than this: the subordination of familial and particularly maternal obligations to the service of party political activism.  This is the illness that drives people to Washington to “do something” rather than remain at home preserving and creating the sane culture they claim to desire that the politicians praise and do nothing to protect.  

Men’s responses have been considerably more favorable to her, and this is not only a function of partisan and ideological affinities.  Among men, her favorability ratings are 65% compared to just 52% among women, and of that 65% among men 45% rate her very favorably.  There is probably a number of reasons why this is so, but it is hard to get away from the creeping suspicion that men’s favorable responses to her are based to a significant degree on  a combination of her looks and the transgressive, masculine traits they identify in her.  The joke that Sarah Palin is the political equivalent of Lara Croft now seems to me to be an unfortunately apt explanation of why many men are falling all over themselves to praise her.  Some part of the response to Palin from most men is probably as disordered as the priorities of the conservatives who are trying to make a virtue out of the fact that their preferred VP candidate has several young children whose upbringing she will necessarily have to neglect if she is to fulfill her political role.

P.S. Peter Suderman discusses the Sarah Palin-as-action hero idea at Culture11.

Scott Richert makes a compelling case that the Palin nomination is an assault on the Christian understanding of the distinctiveness and complementarity of the sexes.  Aaron Wolf discusses the Palin choice in relation to abortion and foreign policy.  Thomas Fleming observes:

If Ms. Palin is a truly a Christian conservative, she is certainly not a conservative Christian.  Christians are supposed to understand the implications of “male and female created He them” and, at the very least, realize that a mother’s primary obligation is not to the taxpayers but to her children and husband.  It is all very well to celebrate her prowess as a politician and moose-hunter, but I do not recall these as feminine qualities in the Scriptures. I or we are not saying that we cannot vote for a woman who did not stay home to take care of her family, but only that this decision is incompatible with traditional Christian morality.

Andrew:

If Obama’s family were as colorful as Palin’s, you can bet the press would have been all over it.

He has to be kidding.  I am guessing that one of the reasons why the press paid relatively little attention to Obama’s many siblings and his extended family in Kenya is that a) it wasn’t particularly relevant and b) there was probably some concern that talking about his father’s four wives and Obama’s many half-siblings scattered around the world would seem strange and foreign to the public.  (How many people, aside from avid Dreams From My Father readers and political junkies, knew who Maya Soetero-Ng was until she stepped on the convention stage last week?)  That didn’t stop somecolumnists at the NYT from going overboard in their focus on his multinational family.  To some extent, the press did take some interest in Obama’s family history, but it was almost always on the terms that Obama had set out for them in his book and the many biographical references in his speeches, and when it wasn’t that it was done as more of an effort to suppress crazy Internet rumors about Obama’s religion.  However “colorful” Andrew thinks Palin’s family is, their story is fairly familiar and recognizable to most Americans.  Obama’s family as a whole obviously is not, which is why most of the media have avoided talking about it in much detail.

The new CBS/NYT poll offers some evidence that the GOP ticket has not enjoyed a bounce from the Palin announcement so much as it has coincided with an odd Obama weakening, as an eight-point lead last week at this time has become a tie mainly through weakening support for Obama and a slight increase in the number of undecided voters.  During the days between Sunday, when the last poll was completed, and today Obama voters have become significantly less enthusiastic about their ticket (from 67% to 55%) and they are more likely to support Obama/Biden with reservations (from 16% to 30%).  Enthusiasm for McCain among his backers has ticked up 10 points this week.  An enthusiasm gap that had been like a yawning chasm has become a much narrower divide.  I can understand why McCain’s number went up, but it makes no sense that any Obama supporters would become less enthusiastic about their ticket on account of the Palin selection. 

More troubling for Obama is the figure on his effectiveness as Commander-in-Chief, which has actually declined by a few points since the weekend.  Perhaps the constant comparisons between Palin and Obama have worked to Obama’s disadvantage, and it may be that the attacks on McCain’s judgement because of the VP selection have not registered with these respondents.  McCain has gained slightly with independents, now trailing by three instead of six, and has solidified white evangelicals behind him even more (as he was inevitably going to do anyway–another reason why the Palin pick, besides being risky, was probably redundant in at least some respects).  The white evangelical numbers are interesting: Obama receives just 18% support from this group, which is just about the lowest level he or any previous Democratic nominee has ever received in a poll.

Richard Viguerie, the cranky old school dean of the conservative movement who has obliterated George Bush and John McCain for their various apostasies, declared flatly this morning: “Sarah Palin is the next Ronald Reagan.” ~Tom Bevan

I’m sorry, but this is getting out of hand.  Whatever you think about the substance of Reagan’s speech in 1964, to which some drunken enthusiasts may want to compare Palin’s acceptance speech, there is no comparison between them.  Part of this is in the nature of the speeches.  Reagan’s speech was entirely focused on policy and the differences between the candidates, it was delivered in a different register, and he said next to nothing about himself, while Palin’s speech was necessarily part introduction and part apology.  There is certainly no comparison between Reagan at a similar time in his career, c. 1976, and Palin today.  Of course, the point of this statement about Palin is to use a comparison to Reagan to express approval and admiration.  Calling someone the next Reagan is a trope of Republican praise just as calling a foreign leader the next Hitler or Stalin is a trope of condemnation, and all this does is diminish the significance of both the famous person and shows the one compared to him to be unworthy of the comparison.  Reagan’s name has become almost entirely dissociated from the man, and it has simply become an identity marker to be trotted out to sanctify this or that person or proposal.  Reagan nostalgia has become an effort to cover up for the distortions and perversions of the last twenty years.  As Justin Raimondo said of the convention yesterday:

Now we are being treated to a video about … Ronald Reagan. There they go again — with that Soviet-lke iconography, the Great Helmsman’s visage displayed on the screen like an emblem of the Old Ideology, the one no one pays any attention to anymore. “Get government off our backs” exclaims Dutch, and the words ring hollow as the theme of the video, which is that McCain is the real inheritor of the Reaganite mantle. Just as Lenin’s successors, from Stalin to Gorbachev, claimed the mantle of an orthodox Marxism that was all form and no substance.

Since I have been saying for the last six days that the Palin choice would drag down the ticket, I should acknowledge that this doesn’t seem to be happening so far.  In fact, one post-speech survey showed some important gains for McCain:

After viewing the speech, there is a 9 percent increase in the number of Independents that will “probably’ or “definitely” vote McCain/Palin.

Palin’s speech proved to be equally effective in swaying votes for both men and women.  Among the independents who watched her speech, respondents who report that they will “probably” or “definitely” vote for McCain increased by 10% across both genders, around 38% of female independents and 36% of their male counterparts. 

On the other hand, the GOP does have to contend with those voters (9% overall, 11% of Reps, 10% of conservatives) who say they are unwilling to vote for a woman for President*.  I am assuming this attitude will have some effect on these voters’ willingness to support a ticket that includes a woman as VP.  10% of McCain voters are unwilling to vote for a woman for President, and another 7% are unsure whether they would be willing.  That could help to explain why 9% of Republicans and particularly 16% of conservatives said in another survey that they are less likely to back McCain with Palin as VP.  More likely, however, these are Republicans and conservatives who were already inclined to back Obama–only 3% of McCain backers say they are less likely to vote for McCain because of Palin.  It could be that McCain voters who wouldn’t support a woman for President can rationalize their vote for McCain/Palin by treating the VP choice as trivial or irrelevant, but it seems to me that this may be a real problem for McCain among a significant portion of those who would have otherwise voted for him. 

*In another odd result that pairs up with the surprisingly greater resistance to a black candidate for President among 18-29 year olds that I noted before, 15% of 18-29 year olds are unwilling to vote for a woman for President, which is a higher percentage than any other age group, including 65+.  Whether this is a backlash against enforced diversity and the like, I don’t know, but it is another one of these curious examples of a small but significant group of young voters being more forthright in their opposition to women and minority candidates. 

Update: SUSA has a poll from Washington that gauges respondents’ views on the value of the VP choices, and the results are worth noting.  46% say Biden is an asset, compared to 26% who say he is a liability; for Palin it is much closer at 45% asset, 39% liability.  There are more people undecided about Biden’s impact because they say they do not know enough about him.  That’s a bit ironic, considering how much of a fixture in Washington politics he has been compared to Palin’s obscurity on the national stage.  The media firestorm around Palin has left far fewer people unsure about her, but she still seems to be doing McCain more good than harm.  As you would expect, assessments of VP choices break down predictably along party lines, but pluralities of independents consider both Biden (45%) and Palin (46%) assets.  The key difference is that there are significantly more independents who see Palin as a liability (40%) than view Biden that way (30%).  More important, among independents there are equal numbers of respondents saying that the choice reflects poorly and well on McCain (tied at 43%), while independents think choosing Biden reflects well on Obama by a ten-point margin.  For these Washington voters, the Palin choice seems to be mostly a wash.  Opinions have hardened about Palin and have done so more quickly in just the last few days, no doubt aided by the media obsession with her and her family, which should give Biden more of an opportunity to make a favorable impression at the debate in the fall and gives Palin less margin for error in the coming months.  Not surprisingly, the Palin choice goes over poorly with New Yorkers, who see her as a liability rather than an asset 42-35.  We’ll have to wait for more competitive and representative states to be surveyed before being able to say more about the effect of the choice on the ticket.   

Second Update: This small panel of Michigan voters largely did not respond well to the speech.  Judging from this panel, the speech seems to have gone over particularly poorly with independent and older women.

Third Update: The Free Press panel’s independents were mostly pretty hard-core Obama supporters, so bear that in mind when considering their hostility to Palin’s speech.

Thank goodness there are some level-headed folks out there.  Here‘s Freddy on the main blog on the effort to compare Palin to Thatcher:

For a start, Thatcher was an exceptionally intelligent woman; Palin, for all her canny snark and tough-gal know-how, is not. If you think that is an elitist view, then you are wrong and perhaps stupid.

What can be said for Palin is that she is reputedly very diligent and a quick study, so I am inclined to think that she is probably not intellectually lazy and incurious as, say, Mr. Bush is, but that doesn’t invalidate Freddy’s observation.  More important, however, are these points:

Maggie T was not plucked from obscurity by a party establishment eager to play personality politics; she had to fight her way through often hostile Tory ranks. Unlike Plain, she achieved in spite of her sex, not because of it.

Palin’s appeal is almost the antithesis of Thatcher’s. The amazing thing about Thatcher was that she was never really popular — she was viciously hated by the working-classes — yet she still won elections. Her success was based on a personal strength, a certain philosophy of government, and perhaps a degree fearsomeness. Palin’s is founded on her class, family, lipstick, and puerile class baiting (it’s too cheap to be called class warfare).

Unfortunately, the intellectual laziness that allows people to identify Palin with Thatcher (they’re both women, and they’re high up in center-right parties!) is the same one that allowed so many Republicans to identify Bush with Reagan.  If Bush was attacked for not being curious or knowledgeable, Republicans made this a badge of honor because Reagan had been attacked in similar ways.  The difference was that the criticism of Bush was accurate, and it was largely not accurate when applied to Reagan.  When most sane people reacted with a mixture of horror and laughter to Bush’s “axis of evil” remarks, Republicans took this not as a sign of the stupidity of the idea, but as a vindication of the “Reaganesque” quality of Bush’s warmongering because Reagan’s rhetoric had once provoked similar reactions.  Never mind that the geopolitical circumstances and the underlying policies being offered were radically different–they both said something was evil, so they are alike!

In fact, if you wanted a comparative example of a female politician on the right promoted not primarily on merit, the European name to spring to mind is Angela Merkel.  She was placed in Kohl’s cabinet because she was an Ossi, and perhaps partly because she was a woman, as a gesture to the East Germans after unification.  Merkel then became Kohl’s favorite and became leader of the CDU after he resigned.  The comparison isn’t perfect–she spent a lot more time in the federal government before rising to a comparably high leadership position–but it is much more appropriate than comparing her with Lady Thatcher.  Perhaps there are Merkel admirers who would find this comparison flattering, but I’m not sure that it really is.

P.S. Clark has also failed to swoon.

Here is an item from Jonathan Martin’s blog that drives home how the impulse of many Republicans and conservatives to lean towards backing Obama is usually both superficial and absolutely irrational:

Even for unhappy Republicans, who’ve soured on the party and flirted with Obama it [Palin’s speech] was a flash of light in a dismal season for the GOP.

“Sarah Barracudda kicked ass — and my vote is back on the market!” gushed one Obamacan.

Think about this.  Here you have a Republican who has soured on the party, presumably because of its poor policies, its lack of competence or some combination of the two, and he is so disillusioned that he felt drawn to a Democratic nominee who probably holds absolutely none of his views, perhaps simply because Obama is not the Republican.  One well-delivered speech later given by the Vice Presidential nominee filled with what was largely boilerplate rhetoric, and suddenly the GOP ticket seems like a viable alternative to him again. 

With all respect to Gov. Palin, who delivered an effective stemwinder that had a number of amusing lines in it, the conditioned responses that conservatives are having to Palin’s speech is frankly depressing.  For all of their complaints and criticisms about McCain’s deviations, conservatives are now falling into line even more pathetically than usual.  Seeing this display, I am tempted to think that even Giuliani could have won the nomination, chosen a similar running mate and nothing would have changed. 

Practically everything that you, the average conservative, like about Sarah Palin is opposed and negated by what John McCain stands for and has represented for pretty much his entire career, but still conservatives are reacting deliriously to a speech whose ultimate purpose is to co-opt them into backing a presidential candidate whose policies on vital national questions are antithetical to everything they value.  Does her small-town ethos impress you and inspire some identification with her?  McCain embraces the policies promoting globalization and mass immigration that are gradually transforming your small towns beyond recognition.  Does her hostility to Washington elites please you?  McCain serves and always has served the interests of those elites, and his immigration legislation was just the most recent and egregious form of this.  Like the undead creature it resembles, the GOP establishment will feed off of every bit of the energy, vivacity and authenticity that Palin possesses in its bid to keep conservatives serving their goals.  Do not help the creature to feed on its victim.

1) Mitt Romney thinks a Supreme Court dominated by seven of nine Republican-appointed justices is liberal.  Well, maybe it is in many ways, but it isn’t entirely clear why we should want to put McCain in charge of adding to the long record of dubious Republican appointments. 

2) Mitt Romney’s speech was a warmed-over version of his stump speech, which continues to be as lifeless and uninteresting as it always was.  Andrew notes that it “was random and moronic,” which is to say that it was textbook Romney.

3) Mike Huckabee thinks that children of his generation had schooldesks because John McCain was bombing North Vietnam.  Presumably the long dearth of major foreign conflict between 1975 and 1991 meant that we suffered from a dangerous desk shortage, perhaps even a Desk Gap with the Soviets.  Indeed, how many times when I was a child growing up in the ’80s did I wish that there were larger defense outlays in order to make sure that each of us had a desk?  Too many. 

4) Huckabee thinks that soldiers provide freedom, which is one of the weirdest, most disturbing views out there.  It is one that last appeared at a Republican convention in Zell Miller’s ’04 speech.

5) Huckabee used to be able to give an engaging, coherent speech, but now has apparently lost that ability.  Perhaps he has lost the powers he received from Chuck Norris.

6) Obama brought back “European ideas” from his trip overseas, which must mean that there have never been any Americans who have argued for an expansive welfare state. 

7) Giuliani is dead-set against cosmopolitans, which would have to be news to his former constituents.

8) These three must have been scheduled ahead of Sarah Palin to make her look as good as possible.